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Earth Day - 1990
Increasing environmental consciousness - dolphin-safe tuna; save the rain forests; Exxon Valdez spill; global warming; the ozone layer; bio-degradable wastes; disposable diapers, save the elephants, save the whales, save the rhinoceros.
People are becoming more aware of preciousness of life on earth; how fragile our environment is. We’d better start taking care of it.
Search for the origins of matter
Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time - a best-seller
Time magazine cover
Hubble space telescope - able to view millions of light years into the past
Investigation into the basic building blocks of life
Genetic research
Bio-technology
Q. Where did we come from?
Q. Why are we here?
Science is unable to answer these questions - they involve data which lie outside of the scope of science to observe.
We may advance in our knowledge to know what happened just milliseconds after the Big Bang, but we are still left with the questions
“Why did it happen?” and “What was going on before the Big Bang?”
We may advance to the point where it becomes possible to design human beings through genetic engineering, but we are still left with the question “Should we?”. Science cannot answer questions like that.
Genesis 1 claims to have answers to the question of origins.
But Gen. 1 itself is a chapter full of questions:
Q. Is it a factual account, or is it some sort of creation myth designed to convey some spiritual truth?
Q. If God did create the universe, how did he do it? Did he create it suddenly and fully formed, or did he do it gradually, over a period of millions of years?
Q. When did he do it?
It’s no wonder that the Jews had a tradition that no one under the age of 30 was allowed to teach Gen. 1.
What about Gen. 1… is it fact or fiction or fable?
For a Christian, the definitive answer comes from the rest of Scripture.
The rest of Scripture regards Genesis 1 as factual. Job and Isaiah, Peter and Paul refer to Genesis 1 as nothing but a historical record of how God created the earth. But most important, Jesus Christ regarded it as historical fact.
Genesis 1 states that God created the universe in six days.
Does that mean 24 hour days, or does it mean something else?
- If it means 24 hour days, why is it that the mechanism for measuring 24 hour days didn’t even exist until the fourth day? The concept of a day really didn’t exist until then.
- If it means 24 hour days, why is it that the seventh day - the day on which God rested from his creative work - stretched from then until now? That seems to be a day that was longer than 24 hours.
- If it means 24 hour days, how is it possible that there was enough time on day six for Adam to be created, to be placed in the Garden, to name all the animals on earth, to begin to feel a sense of loneliness in himself, to be put to sleep by God, to have a woman created out of his side, and to get married to Eve? That’s a pretty full day, if it is a 24 hour day!
The word day in Scripture doesn’t always have to mean a 24 hour period. It can mean an age. We talk about the “Day of the Lord” as referring to all the events associated with the second coming of the Lord.
When you look closely at the structure of Gen. 1, and what happened on each day, you begin to see a pattern emerging.
On Day One, God separates light from darkness
On Day Two, God separates the waters in the atmosphere from the waters on earth. He calls the area that lays between them the Sky.
On Day Three, God separates the oceans from the dry land.
So on Days 1 - 3, you have God giving form to what he has created.
Then look what he does on Days 4 - 6. He goes back and fills each of the things he has given form to on days 1 - 3.
On Day Four, he fills the darkness and the light with heavenly bodies - the sun, the moon, the stars - some to govern the day, and some to govern the night.
On Day Five, God fills the sky with birds and the waters with fish.
On Day Six, God fills the dry land with animals, and finally, his crowning creation - man.
So you have this pattern of form and fulness - form on days 1 - 3, fulness on days 4 - 6. This is especially significant in light of v.2 which says that the earth was formless and empty. God addressed that formlessness and emptiness by giving his creation form and filling it with life.
(v.2 - Gap Theory)
This beautiful structure in Genesis 1 indicates to me that God created the Universe and life on earth in a careful, orderly way - it wasn’t haphazard. At every turn, it bears the marks of the master designer.
The story is told of how Sir Isaac Newton had an beautifully elaborate model of the solar system in his study. One day a colleague came in who was an skeptic of the Bible. Seeing the model, the man remarked in admiration “What a marvelous model! Who made it?” The great physicist replied “Nobody made it.”
“Come now, Sir Isaac, somebody must have made it, and whoever he is, he is a genius.” Newton laid his book aside and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “This thing is but a tiny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you and I know. Here I am unable to convince you that this little model - nothing more than a toy - is without a designer and maker. But you profess to believe that the great original of which this is only a pale copy doesn’t have a designer or a maker. How do you arrive at such a conclusion?”
Carl Sagan the astronomer and author of the popular TV series “Cosmos” is no believer in a creator God. Yet in his book Dragons of Eden he has written:
“A single human chromosome contains 20 billion bits of information. How much information is 20 billion bits? What would be its equivalent, if it were written down in an ordinary printed book in modern human language? 20 billion bits are the equivalent of about three billion letters. If there are approximately six letters in an average word, the information content of a human chromosome corresponds to about five hundred million words. If there are about three hundred words on an ordinary page of printed type, this corresponds to about two million pages. If a typical book contains five hundred such pages, the information content of a single human chromosome corresponds to some four thousand volumes. It is clear then that the chromosome contains an enormous library of information. It is equally clear that so rich a library is required to specify as exquisitely constructed and intricately functioning an object as a human being.”
He sees design, but he doesn’t see a designer!
Genesis 1 has some extremely important implications for us today.
1. Genesis 1 tells us that we are creatures, made by a Creator.
This is not a very popular idea. The ideology of evolutionism has gained total control of our educational and scientific establishments. Why? Because man doesn’t want to be confronted with the fact that he is accountable to a creator for the way he lives and the things he does. If we just evolved over a period of billions of years from a couple of hydro-carbon molecules that combined by accident, then we aren’t accountable to anybody.
But we haven’t just evolved from inanimate matter. We aren’t just the product of blind chance, the random combination of molecules.
If that were the case, then our lives would have utterly no meaning whatsoever. There would be no basis for love, for goodness, for truth, for justice.
The Bible tells us that we are creatures who are accountable for our existence to our Creator. When we lose sight of this, as our society has done, then human life itself begins to lose its value.
result - suicide, euthanasia, abortion, infanticide, genocide
These thing happen because human life comes to be measured only in terms of its usefulness to other human beings.
2. Genesis 1 tells us that we have been made in the image of God.
The New Age movement says that God is all around us, and that God is in us, that we are God. The Mormons claim that as we are, God once was, and He is now, we will become.
But the Bible says that we are made as creatures in the image of God. We are not little gods, nor will we ever become gods - only God is God. But he has made us in his image. We bear a certain resemblance to him.
This is not physical, because God is a spirit. This image of God resides in the immaterial part of our being. We share with Him certain aspects of his character. We can think, we can reason. We can make choices. We can communicate. We can love. We yearn for truth. We desire justice. We love beauty and form and order. He has even given us some of His great creativity. These are the things that separate us by an infinite degree from even the most highly developed animals. These are the things that constitute the image of God in us.
Since we bear the image of God, every human being is valuable. Every human being - from the homeless person lying in a puddle of urine in Penn Station to the elegant fashion model on Fifth Avenue - has a worth and a dignity and a value that is not rooted in how they look, or how much money they make, or what rung of the social ladder they happen to be on.
When a society tries to eliminate God and put man in his place (that is the essence of humanism), the result is not that man is elevated, but that man undergoes a terrible fall. He becomes an animal, or worse, he becomes a devil. He becomes less than a man. He becomes inhumane. Look at Nazi Germany and what they did to the Jews. Look at the Communist countries and what they did to their dissidents. Look at America and what it’s doing to its unborn babies.
The only sound basis for human rights and human dignity and respect for life is to base our concept of human life on what the Bible says. Man is a creature created by God in His image.
3. Genesis 1 tells us that we have been made stewards of creation.
We are here to to explore the earth , not to exploit it.
We are here to appreciate the environment, not to depreciate it by polluting and spoiling it.
Part of the privilege we have as God’s creatures is to enjoy and benefit from the beautiful world in which he has placed us.
Christians of all people ought to be interested in finding out all they can about the world in which we live. Develop in our children a sense of curiosity and awe and wonder about creation.
But along with that we must develop a sense that we are responsible to God for our stewardship of planet earth. We are accountable to him.